She announced her feat on her live blog on Monday at the end of Day 40, after she had travelled 700 miles (1,127 kilometres) while pulling a pulk or sledge with all of her kit, battling temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius together with wind speeds of around 60mph.
Captain Harpreet Chandi, a 32-year-old Indian-origin British Sikh Army officer and physiotherapist also known as ‘Polar Preet’, has created history by becoming the first non-white woman to complete a solo, unsupported expedition to the South Pole, a PTI report in The Tribune, Chandigarh, says.
She announced her feat on her live blog on Monday at the end of Day 40, after she had travelled 700 miles (1,127 kilometres) while pulling a pulk or sledge with all of her kit, battling temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius together with wind speeds of around 60mph.
“I made it to the South Pole where it’s snowing. Feeling so many emotions right now. I knew nothing about the polar world three years ago and it feels so surreal to finally be here. It was tough getting here and I want to thank everybody for their support,” she wrote.
“This expedition was always about so much more than just me. I want to encourage people to push their boundaries and to believe in themselves, and I want you to be able to do it without being labelled a rebel. I have been told ‘no’ on many occasions and to ‘just do the normal thing’, but we create our own normal,” Chandi said.
She had all through been uploading a live tracking map of her trek and posting regular blogs of her journey.
“Day 40 – Finished. Preet has just made history becoming the first woman of colour to complete a solo expedition in Antarctica,” reads the final entry of her blog.
“You are capable of anything you want to do. No matter where you are from or where your start line is, everybody starts somewhere. I don’t want to just break the glass ceiling; I want to smash it into a million pieces,” she said.
Part of a Medical Regiment in the northwest of England, Chandi’s primary role is to organise and validate training for medics in the Army as Clinical Training Officer.
Currently based in London, she is completing her masters degree in Sports and Exercise Medicine, part-time, at Queen Mary’s University in London.
“This expedition was always about so much more than just me. I want to encourage people to push their boundaries and to believe in themselves, and I want you to be able to do it without being labelled a rebel. I have been told ‘no’ on many occasions and to ‘just do the normal thing’, but we create our own normal,” Chandi said.
As part of her polar training she had been dragging around two large tyres over the past few months, which acted as a substitute for the heavy sledge she had had to drag along in the Antarctica.
“It definitely feels colder in the last degree where I’m at higher altitude. I haven’t seen anyone here in the last degree and now I’m 15 nautical miles from the South Pole. I can’t believe I’m almost there,” read her entry from Sunday, a day before her milestone journey became a moving page of history
She also used her time in the cold to think about wedding plans when she returns to England. Before she set off on her expedion, she got engaged to her fiancé, Army reservist David Jarman. The couple are expected to be reunited in Chile when she returns from the South Pole later this month.
Chandi says she has always been keen to push the human body to its limits and sees her latest mission as part of this wider research.
As an “endurance athlete”, she has run marathons and ultra-marathons and, as an Army officer, completed large-scale exercises and deployments in Nepal, Kenya and most recently a six-month United Nations peacekeeping tour to South Sudan.
“Anything ambitious can feel out of reach at the beginning but every bit of training I complete brings me closer to my goal. My training expeditions in Greenland and Norway have helped prepare me and my goal is now in reach,” she declared before setting off for the South Pole in November.
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